Notice

How to make a private child maintenance arrangement

If you separate, you're both still responsible for the financial costs of bringing up any children.

If it’s possible, you can make these arrangements yourselves to support the children financially. These are called 'private child maintenance arrangements'.

Advantages of a private child maintenance arrangement

A private child maintenance arrangement costs nothing to set up. It can be simple and quick to arrange because you don't have to deal with any official rules or authorities. It means you can agree:

between yourselves how much maintenance should be paid

how and when payments should be made

to change arrangements if circumstances change

to pay for items instead of money - for example, buying a new school uniform instead of making one of your regular payments

Disadvantages of a private child maintenance arrangement

Private child maintenance arrangements aren't legally binding or enforceable. This means you can't force the other parent to keep paying if they stop.

It could be difficult to agree about child maintenance. For example, you might have left a violent relationship and it's unsafe for you to contact your ex-partner. Or you might disagree about how much a reasonable amount of child maintenance would be.

This figure can be a starting point to discuss how much child maintenance to agree on.

Change of circumstances

If you have a private child maintenance arrangement, you don’t have to report any changes in your circumstances to the other parent. It’s a good idea to include a review date so that you can reconsider the agreement and change it if necessary.

If you’re paying maintenance and your circumstances change before the review date, you might need to try and re-negotiate your arrangement. For example, if you lose your job, or if you have a baby with a new partner, you might not be able to afford the same amount of maintenance.

Making a private arrangement legally binding

In Scotland, you could ask a solicitor to draw up a 'Minute of Agreement' to record your private arrangement. Once this is registered in the books of Council and Session it becomes a legally binding agreement, equivalent to an order of the Court of Session.

You can't draw up a Minute of Agreement if the Child Maintenance Service has already arranged a maintenance agreement for you.

If your ex-partner doesn’t comply with a Minute of Agreement

If you’ve set up a Minute of Agreement, and it doesn’t work, you can still apply to the Child Maintenance Service to arrange maintenance if the order has been in place for at least 12 months. This is called the '12-month rule'. You can also get the Minute of Agreement enforced by private officers of court called Messengers-at-Arms.

Financial advice

You might want to get financial advice before agreeing a private arrangement. For example, this could help you understand your ex-partner’s financial situation better and help you negotiate a more realistic private maintenance arrangement. You won’t get financial help to pay for a financial adviser.

Mediation

If you’re finding it difficult to come to an agreement about maintenance, you could get the help of a family mediator. You both have to be willing to go to mediation. Any decisions you make there won’t be legally binding, unless you get the agreement drawn up in court.